Chronicles of the Kiridians
Chapter 5

For it is written in the Chronicles of the Kiridians:

It will not always be easy to do the right thing.

Sometimes what we want most, and what we need will not be the same.

It is our character that shows during these times.

Desires can be tricky, don’t let them rule you.

Traveling in a car for two hours with Raina and Joey went about as well as could be imagined. Raina would wake up randomly and be upset about the conditions of the car and get mad that we weren’t there yet. Joey tried to convince me to turn around and actually go show Raina around town the entire car ride here. I’ve been biting my tongue, but it’s getting annoying and I’m really just wanting him to stop talking.

“Not to mention what if we fall in the hole and can’t get out?!” Joey continues on the same rant that we’ve been hearing since we got in. We are about ten minutes away from the cave. Ten minutes away from helping Raina track her siblings down and doing what Lena asked of me. “We could die down there, Kara!”

“Joseph!” says Raina holding her hands to her temples and massaging them as she closes her eyes and scrunches her face. “I swear to Alpha, if you open your mouth one more time about not going to this cave, I will personally see to it that I leave you at the bottom of the hole. Are we understood?”

“But-”

“I said are we understood, Joseph?” she says interrupting him.

I can’t help but crack a smile when Raina goes princess mode on people. I’m sure on Kiridia this was just a normal way for her to respond, but here on Earth, you have to be vapidly unaware to respond to someone like that. Joey is staring out the window with a nervous expression on his face, and I feel for him. I know that this goes against everything that he believes in, but I also didn’t hold a gun to his head and make him come. That was his choice.

“I’m sorry,” says Raina taking a deep breath. “I’m nervous. This is a lot to take in today. I don’t know how I’m going to replace my siblings if this doesn’t work.” Her eyes well up with tears as she turns her face to the window. I can’t imagine how scary all of this is for her. I give her a hard time, but the truth about Raina is, whether you want to or not; at the end of the day, you start to care for her.

“Raina, I don’t think Lena would have sent us down this path if it wouldn’t work,” I reassure her as I pull off to the side of the road and stop the car. The cave is right up a long dirt road, and I don’t want my parent’s car anywhere near the cave in case someone decides to come by and piece together where we are. “Plus, we are here. So now is not the time for tears. It’s the time for conquering.” I say trying to put on a brave smile.

The truth is, I didn’t realize how nervous I was to go into this cave until we got here. I mean, think about it. we are three stupid teenagers going into a cold dark cave with no idea how to get back or what to do in the case of emergencies. I try to not let it show on my face because I refuse to give Joey the satisfaction of knowing that the reality of this is finally hitting me.

You’re going to be fine, Kara.

The sound of Lena’s voice in my head makes me jump but also gives me courage as I am the first to jump out of the car. Raina quickly follows and we start to walk toward the cave as Joey throws a fit from behind, but still follows us down the trail.

“To my dog, I give you my baseball that I never let you eat. It’s all yours now buddy. I won’t need it anymore.”

“Joey, stop being dramatic,” I say as we approach the fence that surrounds the cave. “Might I remind you again that no one forced you to come along. You were given an option and you agreed.” He stops talking as Raina walks up to the fence. It is wired with a green metal and the holes are almost nonexistent they are so tiny. The fence itself has to stand at least six feet tall, but looking at Raina she seems not worried as she touches her necklace and holds it to the wiring of the fence.

The necklace lights up and begins to shoot a beam of light toward the fence. The wiring of the fence starts to transform and pull apart as she moves the necklace in a rectangle formation. The fence forms a hole that is big enough for us to squeeze through. I start at the fence in utter shock at what just happened as Raina looks around before climbing into the hole and looking at me and Joey from the other side.

“Are we just standing here all day or do we have a mission to accomplish, Kara?” she asks me with persistence. “We are so close!” We continue to stare in awestruck and Raina rolls her eyes and grabs me by my shirt and pulls me through the fence. I fall through the hole and then urge Joey to follow after us as she pulls me toward the cave.

“Honestly Kara, you’ve seen a literal ancient space warrior astro-project to you through space and me causing a hole in a fence is what sends you into a stupor?” Joey takes a minute to climb through, but when we get to the entrance of the cave, he finally runs up behind us breathing heavily. Raina turns and looks at the two of us. “I know this is a lot to ask. So thank you for coming with me. Don’t expect me to say it again, because odds are I won’t.”

Joey snorts as Raina walks toward the small entrance in the floor of the cave. When she gets to the opening she turns to us and takes a deep breath. “Let’s replace them.” She ducks into the hole and moves aside so Joey and I have room to go inside as well.

“Kara, we don’t need to do this,” says Joey urging me to recosider. “Please, I really am nervous about this.”

“Then you can stay and watch,” I say to Joey. “I told you. I can’t leave her hanging. I feel responsible.”

I climb inside the hole and Raina smiles at me as her necklace is shining a bright light throughout the dark cave. She is already in one of the helmets that sit in the box inside the cave and tosses me one when I am all the way in. “Is he coming?” she asks me as I fit the helmet onto my head. “Because if not we need to move.”

I can hear the anxiety in her voice pick up now that we are so close to our goal. I know that this isn’t going to be an easy mission, and I haven’t even brought up the fact that physically getting to her siblings after we get their locations could be a problem, but Raina has probably already thought of that. I don’t think she expects us to move at the drop of a hat, say if her siblings land in New York or something.

“I’m here,” Joey calls from the outside. His feet step into the cave, and I can see his body recoil as he takes a few deep breaths and ducks into the cave. I quickly pick another helmet from the box and hand it to him and he sighs as he places it on his head. “I hate both of you.” he says sternly.

“It really does mean a lot you’re coming, Joey.” Raina quickly says as she turns around and begins to walk. “I think it was right past that opening in the wall, right?” Raina asks us as she moves throughout the cave. “We should be pretty close.”

We walk for a few minutes before we come to the place where I first heard Lena’s voice. My heart begins to beat quickly as Raina is the first to make her way through the crack in the wall. This time, the adventure of going through this cave seems much more exciting than the last time we were in here. Something about being told not to do something makes it all the more appealing to do it.

I start to move through the cave and the same feeling that overwhelmed me the day I found Raina begins to again. It’s like there’s a piece placed in the puzzle that I’m creating of my life, and the deeper I’m getting into this adventure the more things seem to fit together.

When I get through the crack Raina is standing over the hole that we fell into the day we found her. Luckily, the rope ladder that Tom helped us get out the first time we were in this cave. She grabs ahold of the rungs and starts to move down the ladder without waiting for Joey to finish. I watch her face as she climbs down before she disappears behind the rock and can’t help but notice the look of fear. Raina has always been good at hiding her emotions, but she is really slacking right now. This moment could be the one that changes everything for her.

This moment could be the one that changes everything for me.

What’s my end game after we help her replace her siblings? What is the role that Lena has asked me to play, and what do I need to remember? I keep wracking my brain to replace some hidden Kiridian mysteries that I never knew about but all it does is give me a headache. My whole life I’ve settled with the sad truth that I’m just Kara, and if I ever did make it out of Sanora, it would probably still be somewhere in Texas where people still have the same views, go do the same things, and live the same life that I would have had in Sanora.

Now I’m ‘a space warrior contacted me and I’m going on a super cool alien space mission’ Kara, and I don’t know how to feel about her.

I grab ahold of the rope ladder and begin to climb down. Joey stands over me and nods anxiously as he waits for me to get halfway down the rope before he begins to descend into the hole. When all three of us are beneath the cave’s surface, Raina begins to march towards the hole we climbed into when we found her and disappears. When Joey and I follow, we see Raina standing above the ship with her necklace in her hands.

“Kara, I need you,” she says holding out the necklace to me. I walk over to her confused as I stick my hand out. “I can’t do this. I am way too anxious to focus on how to do this correctly.” She walks over to the pod that she arrived at Earth in and presses down on the glass. The air lock releases and once again a bright light fills the dark cavern just like it did the other day.

“Now, place the necklace into the ignition,” Raina commands.

I look at her confused as to where the ignition is and she chuckles. “Sorry, I forgot, advanced technology and all,” she says as she points to a glass box that covers a pointed area in a triangle. “Lift that box and put the edge of the necklace into that hole.”

I lift the box and do as I’m told and a woman’s voice talks over an intercom in the pod. “Welcome back, Princess Raina,” says the robot voice. “How can I help you?”

“LOTUS,” she says to the machine with authority. “I need you to locate the other pods using the GPS from the pod,” says Raina. “Please replace the closest one to us.”

The GPS appears as a hologram in front of me. I jump back as a processing screen starts to load. The machine has a red dot appear on the screen and it starts to blink as a video appears on the screen. Brodie appears on the screen with tangled hair as he frowns in his pod.

“This is Prince Brodie of Kiridia, come in other royal siblings,” he says into the camera with a sly wink. “No in all seriousness, I really need someone to come in.”

Raina screams as she jumps up and down. “That’s Brodie! He’s my favorite sibling!”

Brodie is an attractive boy who looks super similar to Raina. He has sharp cheekbones, and his blonde hair falls in curls around his face. I’m sure that he’s normally more put together than what we are seeing, but who knows where he is or how long he’s been there.

“Some weird Earth animal opened my pod on accident. I’m somewhere in a forest area, I think?” says Brodie with a weird expression. “Edwin, Anya, or Raina, I really need help. I keep setting the cryo-sleep time for a week at a time and waking up, but I’ve never had luck or found someone to help me out of this situation. If you’re getting this, please come save me!”

The video cuts out and Raina jumps into the pod and starts clicking the hologram. “Brodie! Please! Come back!” she says with tears welling up. “LOTUS, where is he located!”

“Prince Brodie is located in a wooded area near the city of San Antonio. It is about a three-hour drive.”

“Perfect! We leave immediately!” says Raina as she yanks the necklace out of the pod and runs towards the exit of the cavern. Joey and I look shocked as the pod begins to close and the light in the cave disappears. We run and follow Raina who is already half way up the rope ladder by the time we get to her.

“Wait!” I say. “Raina we can’t do this again today!”

“We have to, Kara!” she says desperately. “We can’t just let him stay there!”

“He’s in cryo-sleep anyway!” says Joey. “We have to get the car back to Kara’s parents,” he says pointing to me. “Not to mention that we have school tomorrow, and you’re expected to attend. Here on Earth, it is against the law to not go to school.”

“I will do NO such thing!” says Raina as she struts back to the wall where we entered the cave and begins to go through the crack. “I have a brother to replace-”

“And no way to get to him unless I cooperate,” I remind her. “I know that we have a mission, but if you want to complete this and have the best chance at helping him we need to think smarter and not harder,” I remind her. “I already lied to my parents. If you don’t want me to be grounded until I’m 85 years old, I suggest we head back and make a game plan to go to San Antonio next week.” I call to her through the crack.

Raina waits for us on the opposite side of the wall and pouts. “I’m not happy about this, Kara,” she tells me. “Lena put you in charge, and that’s the ONLY reason that I’m allowing this to even be a consideration. My brother is in cryo-sleep, but I want you to know that if anything happens to hi I’m holding both of you personally accountable.”

“I understand,” I tell her with a nod.

We walk to the exit of the cave and hear a voice from the outside. “Quick turn off your light,” I whisper to Raina and Joey. They switch their lights off right as Tom makes his way into the cave with another employee.

“I thought I saw a car down the road. There was also a hole in the fence,” says Tom as they walk toward the helmet box. We duck behind a rock right as he flips his lights on and stares around the opening of the cave. “We need to make sure that there is no one in this cave, Maria,”

The walk toward the crack and disappear as Raina, Joey, and I quickly make a break for the exit of the cave and climb out. We run toward the hole Raina created, and fling ourselves through that. Not stopping to make sure the coast was clear. Once we get through the hole in the fence we continue to run down the long dirt road back toward our car and don’t stop until we all three open up the doors to the truck and throw ourselves in.

“Remind me to never do this again,” says Joey breathing heavy.

I turn on the truck and begin to drive back down toward the road and head home.